Silly season
The media has, since Parliament packed up it's bucket, spade, moat filter and duck rented villa and buggered off on holiday, been in the grip of an annually recurring culture so profound that it actually has its own term: silly season.
Silly season occurs as a result of a combination of factors; the lack of political shenanigans handily concentrated in one spot, the ongoing need by newspapers to print a newspaper, the inability of hacks to actually seek out stories rather than have them arrive via a press release from a PR company, the lack of interest by editors in foreign news and, of course, the tabloid desire to paint somebody or something as a villain, be it a mum who leaves her kids at hone to bugger off on holiday, a virus or a new EU directive banning those photographs of kittens playing with balls of wool.
The only sort of story that seems missing of late is 'beast of...' sorts about big cats. I bloody love those stories, illustrated by blurry photographs of what even I can see is a gorse bush, captioned 'is this the big cat of the moors', about how a feral moggie has been terrorising the inhabitants of some distant moor. Possibly this is because the focus has shifted to foxes terrorising our neighbourhoods, possibly because such stories are easier to research from atop a bar stool in a city boozah.
Silly season story of the week is that of a woman who was caught on CCTV putting a cat in a wheelie bin. OK that's pretty grim but this has made the front page of the red tops. The. Front. Page.
If you drink as much as I do as often as I do in as many places as I do you'll know that pubs love front pages. You can also appreciate how important the front page is when you watch a tee vee programme or film set in a bar, or a newspaper, or a bar in a film about a newspaper and you will see framed front pages. Like 'we win', or 'War over', or 'Man walks on moon'.
Not 'we find feline felon'. Get a grip guys, I know that newspaper front pages must be difficult to write but hey, surely somewhere in the world something important is happening. We're still fighting a war aren't we, or is Sangin now trouble free?
It's not that I blame the newspapers, they have to print something to wrap chips in. What amazed me was, when the story appeared on the Guardian's web-site, the number of people who commented on it. And then commented on each other's comments.
A woman, for whatever reason, put a cat in a bin...this is not cause for endless speculation about motive, her mental state of, a favourite, comments about how the media treat women who put cats in bins (a demographic so niche I would have thought their views could be safely ignored). Do these people really not have anything better to do? Have they not heard of lego?
And now I'm doing it. Whatever happens to cat bin woman, the public have evidenced a level of buy-in to silly season stories that's frightening. Comments about a bin cat? Pah! Comments about a big cat, that's more like it. I'm off to take a blurry picture of some threatening looking gorse, e mail it to the tabloids and get that debate rolling.
Silly season occurs as a result of a combination of factors; the lack of political shenanigans handily concentrated in one spot, the ongoing need by newspapers to print a newspaper, the inability of hacks to actually seek out stories rather than have them arrive via a press release from a PR company, the lack of interest by editors in foreign news and, of course, the tabloid desire to paint somebody or something as a villain, be it a mum who leaves her kids at hone to bugger off on holiday, a virus or a new EU directive banning those photographs of kittens playing with balls of wool.
The only sort of story that seems missing of late is 'beast of...' sorts about big cats. I bloody love those stories, illustrated by blurry photographs of what even I can see is a gorse bush, captioned 'is this the big cat of the moors', about how a feral moggie has been terrorising the inhabitants of some distant moor. Possibly this is because the focus has shifted to foxes terrorising our neighbourhoods, possibly because such stories are easier to research from atop a bar stool in a city boozah.
Silly season story of the week is that of a woman who was caught on CCTV putting a cat in a wheelie bin. OK that's pretty grim but this has made the front page of the red tops. The. Front. Page.
If you drink as much as I do as often as I do in as many places as I do you'll know that pubs love front pages. You can also appreciate how important the front page is when you watch a tee vee programme or film set in a bar, or a newspaper, or a bar in a film about a newspaper and you will see framed front pages. Like 'we win', or 'War over', or 'Man walks on moon'.
Not 'we find feline felon'. Get a grip guys, I know that newspaper front pages must be difficult to write but hey, surely somewhere in the world something important is happening. We're still fighting a war aren't we, or is Sangin now trouble free?
It's not that I blame the newspapers, they have to print something to wrap chips in. What amazed me was, when the story appeared on the Guardian's web-site, the number of people who commented on it. And then commented on each other's comments.
A woman, for whatever reason, put a cat in a bin...this is not cause for endless speculation about motive, her mental state of, a favourite, comments about how the media treat women who put cats in bins (a demographic so niche I would have thought their views could be safely ignored). Do these people really not have anything better to do? Have they not heard of lego?
And now I'm doing it. Whatever happens to cat bin woman, the public have evidenced a level of buy-in to silly season stories that's frightening. Comments about a bin cat? Pah! Comments about a big cat, that's more like it. I'm off to take a blurry picture of some threatening looking gorse, e mail it to the tabloids and get that debate rolling.
Labels: Media, Newspapers
1 Comments:
As you know, i have two cats and I've often thought of putting them in a "bin", as you call it. Usually this thought crosses my mind at 5am when they wake me out of a drunken stupor demanding food that's smell makes me projectile vomit last night's dinner and drinks. So, while I certainly empathize with this woman, I agree with you that this is not news, but simply a bi-product of "cat ownership".
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